1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electronic devices such as a mobile terminal including at least one microphone unit. More particularly, the present invention relates to the efficient use of space of a mobile terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
A mobile terminal not only provides basic voice communication with a counterpart user, but in recent years have been developed to also include a plurality of additional functions. For example, some of the additional functions including a digital camera module having of millions of pixels therein to capture an object or capture moving images, capabilities for downloading a sound source to listen to music, viewing television (TV) for sky waves, etc. The additional functions become diversified more and more and the volume of the mobile terminal is minimized to meet a user's desire.
In operating the above-described functions, the microphone unit is generally used in accordance with the additional functions. For example, the microphone unit is an indispensable element in the case of not only transmitting a terminal user's voice to a counterpart user during voice communication, but also for recording sounds while capturing moving images or using the mobile terminal as a voice recorder.
FIG. 1 is a perspective view illustrating a mobile terminal 100 according to the conventional art. A display unit 101 is installed on the front side of the mobile terminal, and a speaker unit 102 is installed above the display unit 101. In addition, a microphone unit applied to the mobile terminal is divided into a main microphone unit 103 for mounting the mobile terminal to a head portion and performing voice communication, and a sub microphone unit 104 for speaker phone communication. The main microphone unit 103 is installed in the lower portion of the mobile terminal 100, and the sub microphone unit 104 is installed in the upper portion of the mobile terminal 100. At this point, the sub microphone unit 104 may be formed in the neighborhood of an ear jack hole 105 formed for receiving an ear jack plug of an earphone unit (not shown).
Unsuccessful attempts to eliminate the microphone hole of the speaker unit 102, which is an ear piece for listening with the mobile terminal relatively close to the ear such as in a non-speakerphone telephone conversation, was to use the sub-microphone hole. However, there is a degree of difficulty in such an arrangement due to the speaker unit always being installed at a constant position occurs. Therefore, even when the sub-microphone hole is shared, an effect of a 2-microphone solution cannot be achieved. Consequently, a second microphone of the 2-microphone arrangement should be added to a different portion of the mobile terminal separately, which not only increases manufacturing costs but also is contradictory to an efficient space utilization, and simultaneously, the microphone hole spoils the elegance of the telephone's appearance.